A number of legitimate voters were on Winder’s list of names to be challenged, including someone who knows a thing or two about how elections are supposed to be run.

Caroline Evans ran Barrow County’s elections from 1999-2004 and her name was among those on the list of challenges published by the Barrow Journal last week.

“So how ironic is that?” she asked. “I’ve run the county’s elections for six to seven years, and now I’m getting thrown off the voter list because I don’t have a dadgum water bill?

“When I read my name, I was, ‘Are you kidding? I’ve got to go re-register to vote because I do not pay my water bill to the city of Winder, and I have been voting since I was 18 years old?”

Evans said she has been a resident of Winder for 39 years, but since a divorce eight years ago has lived in the basement apartment of someone else’s Winder home.

“When I pay my rent, I pay one lump sum that includes utilities,” she said. “So there’s not a utility bill in my name.”

Evans said it bothers her that Winder is working on the list so close to the upcoming elections.

“I don’t have a problem with them going through the list, but don’t do it weeks before a major election,” she said. “I feel this election is very important, especially since I’m a city of Winder resident – and very rarely do we have a lot of contested races in the city where they could make a big difference.”

She said if the problem with the voter list isn’t resolved quickly, poll workers will have a lot do deal with on Nov. 8.

“I would really be thinking about working the polls, because it’s going to be a nasty day,” Evans said.

She said she is not mad at the people involved but at their process.

“I’m upset that it’s allowed that you can take a city database to purge a voter list. Why not question or go through and call the list of people and say we want to verify your information?

She said the city’s actions are likely to discourage turnout.

“The day I saw my name, I thought, ‘This is a discouragement. Why would I want to go back and re-register to vote? This makes me mad.’”
“That’s exactly what is going to happen to people. We can’t get them out to vote anyway, and they are not going to take time to re-register to vote. It’s not convenient.”

She said the voters incorrectly placed on the city’s final challenge list also would not want to be singled out and forced to vote by paper provisional ballots.

“I don’t want to get up there and have them put me over with other people using provisional ballots,” Evans said. “You see those people that are over there to the side and wonder what’s going on with them, there’s some reason why (poll workers) are questioning their right to vote.”
She added: “I wanted to vote in that city election and in the county’s special election, but it may be that I’m not going to.”

MATTHEW BARNETTE: FIRST-TIME VOTER
Matthew Barnette, a first-time voter, contacted the Barrow Journal after seeing his name in the newspaper last week.

“I live with my parents,” he said. “Therefore I do not have a utility bill. I am registered to vote and very proud of it. It was to be my first election, but I am on the ‘list.’”

He said he went by city hall on Friday to try to straighten out the mistake, but was told neither the mayor nor the city’s election superintendent was in.

“The receptionist told me she was sorry for the error, but I would have to see one of them,” Barnette said. “Believe me, I will go back.”

He said his greatest concern was not finding his own name on the list but discovering the names of his two grandmothers – Jackie S. Foster and Louise N. Barnette – who reside at the Winding Hollow assisted living facility at 175 S. Broad St.

Twenty other residents of that facility also were on the published list.

“They would never miss voting,” Barnette said. “Try explaining this to 80-year-old ladies that pay their water thru their rent!”

As previously reported, the elderly mother of Barrow County commissioner Ben Hendrix also was included on the list because she receives city water services through a different assisted living facility on West Athens Street. A total of 16 residents of that facility were on the list published last week.

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